Ashwin

A 7km trek inside the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kerala to see the fabulous Thoovanam falls. Mesmerised to see water gushing out from heights but appalled to see the amount of plastic bottles littered around it. Pls respect nature. 🙏🙏 @ParveenKaswan

Attention @mybmc underground water pipeline leakage observed here tonight, with water emerging through the pavement near the roadside. Kindly inspect the issue. Location - Horniman Circle, Fort.

Of Mumbai’s total area of 63,035ha, the green cover was 29,260ha in 1988, which fell to 20,481ha in 1998, 17,331ha in 2008, and 16,814ha in 2018, which means an overall decline of 42.5% over 30 years. The green cover lost is 12,446ha, more than the size of SGNP - 10,300 hectares.

Mumbai is now a free-for all paradise for builders and contractors with friends in power: Cut as many trees as you want, conjure up with ridiculous infra projects worth thousands of crores, build high-rises in places fire engines can't reach.

The heat has been brutal this past week. Temperatures hit 45° in Nagpur, 44° in Ahmedabad, 43° in Prayagraj, 42° in Delhi. Even Bengaluru hit 37°. And we're still in April 😬 A big contributing factor behind rising temperatures is the loss of forest cover, and India has lost a lot of it. Back in 2020, we met the team behind Farmers for Forests (F4F). Their idea was to do agroforestry at scale. The challenge is that farmers can't afford to wait years for trees to pay off, and most tree-planting projects don't survive the first monsoon. The idea was ambitious, and we at @RainmatterOrg backed them early. Most tree-planting in India is monoculture, just rows of one species. But a plantation isn't a forest. F4F plants multi-layer agroforests with fruit, timber, shrubs, intercrops, and native species, trying to mimic what an actual forest does. Six years later, they've gone from 50 acres to 5,000 acres and have just secured funding to reach 40,000 over the next three years. Compared to traditional crop farming, per acre, they're seeing ~4x carbon sequestration, ~3x farmer income, and meaningful improvement in biodiversity and soil health. Still early days, but promising. Those numbers needed to be verifiable. So F4F built TreeLens, an open-source tree-tracking system that uses drone imagery to measure carbon sequestration, tree height, and biodiversity across thousands of small farms. 15 other organisations now use it. The hardest problem in agroforestry is time. Fruit trees take 5 to 7 years to pay off, and most small farmers simply can't wait that long. So F4F is now working with the government and the larger ecosystem to design financial instruments like carbon bonds and first-loss guarantees that protect farmers while the trees grow. Really glad we backed Arti, Aditya, and Krutika early.

We are on our own. I say this everyday and at the risk of sounding insane, I’ll say it again. If each Indian doesn’t take on the mammoth task of rewilding this land and using our indigenous wisdom to heal our habitat, we are doomed.

‼️ An entire wetland in Wadala, Mumbai, was wiped out for an illegal parking lot… run by 3 crooks… dumping 500 truckloads of debris! ‼️ If this can happen in the absolute centre of Mumbai, with a wetland, not knowing 500 trucks are dumping debris, isn’t this also a major security and intelligence failure, indicating authorities are unaware of happenings in the city? As for nature, the government that loves environmental vandalism, can plan its next climate conference or awards on this very site! Tagging @moefcc if it realises its duty to protect environment to step in and ask the Govt of Maharashtra to remove this debris and restore the wetlands.

One by one every single tree will be chopped in Bandra and this doomed city of Mumbai. Temperatures already rising upto 37 degrees in March is only the beginning. @mybmcWardHW hope permissions are in place for felling these trees in private properties, or an FIR is surely coming that way. @MumbaiPolice

At Kedarnath, around 2,300 tonnes of waste accumulated during the last pilgrimage season. With the Char Dham Yatra about to begin, a small request 🙏pls keep a dustbin in your vehicle. The mountains will thank you. #Uttarakhand

When casino culture is aggressively promoted, who cares about the iconic beaches ? Sad to read this. #Goa

Who, in their right minds, would agree to the destruction of Mumbai's coastal guardians?These mangroves are teeming with ecosystems and support the livelihoods of the Kolis. Do you really want a road to replace this divinity?!? 💔😪

Mumbai has experienced the *maximum rise in sea levels* from 1987 to 2021. *More than 10% of its land will be submerged by 2040 due to rising sea levels*. These mangrove trees have protected it for centuries. Is one more road really worth putting our city in harm's way?

मुंबईकरो, क्या करोगे FSI का अगर खिड़की नहीं खोल पाओगे ? मर मर के टैक्स भरोगे , ज़हरीली हवा से मर जाओगे।

This week: Maha Govt sponsors a a 3-day event, Mumbai Climate Week, to talk about urban resilience, climate change. Same week: Maha Govt floats tender to chop off 45,000 mangrove trees.

Just 250 meters from Mumbai’s 5-star Taj Hotel, you get this luxury view, with garbage and plastic floating in the sea. The Taj welcomes international tourists, and this is what we are showing them. I do not know when we will grow as responsible citizens. And BMC, are you sleeping?

Every day a new insanity. A mine cleared in virgin #Karnataka forest, opposed by the forest department, 99,000 trees will be cut

Cricket gyaan: what joy watching the fabulous Ashes TV coverage, every angle covered. Wonderful to see the crowds and little kids streaming into the Sydney ground after the game to catch a glimpse of their heroes while ensuring players get their moment in the sun. Players patiently signing autographs with no pushing and jostling. And the focus always on the TEAM and not individuals. And yes, the coveted Ashes trophy given by a legend in Steve Waugh and not any official or sponsor. Not to forget that Sydney test is now the ‘pink’ test with part of the monies going for breast cancer treatment through McGrath Foundation. Much that @BCCI can learn from. There is much more to building a great cricket culture than just earning money guys! Agree?👍#Ashes2025

Dear @mybmcWardHW . Why are you so determined to ruin the face of Carter Road Promenade by giving permission to these mindless brands that do nothing except create waste. Today they also blocked the access to the beach which is a public space. @forevermark

If a city is choking due to vehicular pollution, the easiest fix is to improve public transport. Here in Mumbai, unscientific, greedy minds want to destroy the mangroves to build more of the Coastal roads. Shockingly, in Mumbai, BEST buses have been reduced by 3/4ths! Subsidised public transport IS the way the economy of a metropolis develops, because labour doesn’t spend so much money on conveyance or time in waiting for the bus/train. Middle class peeps, you can’t appreciate the tube in London/NYC, the cyclist culture in Amsterdam and look the other way when BEST is being systematically destroyed. A developed country is where the rich take public transport, it’s not where the poor own cars that run on crappy roads. #Makeitmakesense

Having depleted fish stocks in its own coastal waters in the early 2000s, Chinese fishing boats are now destroying fishing stock all across the world. The destruction in South America by the Chinese fishing vessels is unimaginable. China now accounted for over 80 percent of fishing in the waters off Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru. China is ranked as the world’s worst nation in a IUU fishing index. Its fleet, by far the largest in the world, is regularly implicated in overfishing, targeting of endangered shark species, illegal intrusion of jurisdiction, false licensing and catch documentation, and forced labour. @RealTonySLee @MiddleOfMayhem @TheAndersPaul @DrewPavlou

Do you really think Hills are calling us !! This is view from Manimahesh Yatra, HP. Even at 13000 feet we have left our marks. @healinghimalaya